Re: THEORY: more questions

On Tue, 25 Nov 2003 21:07:33 +0100, Andreas Johansson <andjo@...>
wrote:

> Quoting Paul Bennett <paul-bennett@...>:
>
>> On Tue, 25 Nov 2003 19:49:02 +0100, Andreas Johansson <andjo@...>
>> wrote:
>>
>> >
>> > That seems to leave English's indirect objects rather hanging in the
>> > blue?*
>>
>> I don't understand. I can't think of a single indirect object in English
>> that isn't marked by a preposition, except for possibly ill-formed
>> utterances like
>>
>> ?give it me
>>
>> for
>>
>> give it to me
>>
>> I don't know. I don't claim for one minute to be an expert in English
>> syntax. Maybe I'm merely failing to understand some aspect of your
>> statement that is at a more abstract technical level than I'm used to
>> encountering.
>
> I think you're simply being a bit home-blind ATM. I'm simply speaking of
> sentences like
>
> give me the scissors
>
> For reasons I'm not entirely clear on,
>
> ?give me it
>
> sounds alot worse to this non-native, but I don't think it's actually
> ungrammatical.
There's a conflation, I fear. The sentence

?give it me

(eliding the preposition "to") is dialectical, whereas

give me it

is standard, not eliding nor modifying any element.

Oddly,

*give the scissors me

although formed by the same "to"-deletion, is almost certainly
ungrammatical compared to

give me the scissors

It seems "to"-deletion of recipients only works when both objects are
pronomial, maybe?

OTOH,

?give me

with unstated instrumental object, is seen as a childish form, albeit one
which has become almost standard in the form

gimme

whereas

?give the scissors

only works with a non-first-person recipient, and probably only when
talking to a child.





Paul